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Thursday, July 20, 2017

Countdown to Hiroshima: X-Minus-17 Days

Every year at this time, I trace the final days leading up to the
first (and so far only) use of the atomic bomb against cities, Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945. This is a subject
that I have studied and written about in hundreds of articles and three
books (including Atomic Cover-up
and Hollywood Bomb) since the early 1980s with a special emphasis
on the aftermath of the bombings, and the government and media
suppression in the decades after. What happened on today's date:

July 20, 1945: Secretary of War met several top U.S. generals in Germany. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower would years later in Newsweek write: "Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed
me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I
was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to
question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the
news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for
using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a
feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave
misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already
defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and
secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world
opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no
longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.

"It was my belief
that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a
minimum loss of ‘face’. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude."

is author of a dozen books (click on covers at right), including the new "THE TUNNELS: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill." He was the longtime editor of Editor & Publisher. Email: epic1934@aol.com. Twitter: @GregMitch

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About Me

is author of a dozen books (click on covers at right), including the new "THE TUNNELS: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill." He was the longtime editor of Editor & Publisher. Email: epic1934@aol.com. Twitter: @GregMitch